T  F 


IRLF 


M01 


THE 


RAI LWAY 
RAIL 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA$TEEL(b 
MARYLAMD5TEELG2) 


•   GIFT   OF    , 


Oritfi  rt  andOevelopment 

JL 


THE  RAILWAY  RAIL 

&ncL  rfmerlc&n 
I  ron,  &nd  SieeL 


*/ 


THE  PENNSYLVANIASlEELCb 

MARYLAMD5TEELG2> 
1915 


COPYRIGHT 

1915 

THE  PENNSYLVANIA  STEEL  Co. 
MARYLAND  STEEL  Co. 


PRESS  OF 

KOHN  &  POLLOCK,  INC. 
BALTIMORE,  MD. 


INTRODUCTION 


HIS  article  is  condensed  from  a  much  larger 
work  which  I  began  a  number  of  years  ago 
for  the  purpose  of  finding  the  cause  of  the 
large  number  of  different  rail  sections  in 
use,  and  with  the  thought  that  we  might 
learn  something  of  the  rail  anc}  its  service 
that  would  be  of  advantage  in  the  designing  of  rolls. 

Since  the  very  beginning  of  man's  existence  he  must, 
of  necessity,  have  had  some  means  of  transporting  both 
himself  and  material  for  his  use.  This  at  first  consisted 
of  what  he  was  able  to  do  by  the  aid  of  his  body  and  phy- 
sical exertion.  No  doubt  the  first  effort  to  improve  this 
condition  came  'way  back  in  the  ages,  long  before  the  writ- 
ten history  of  man,  when  some  primitive  man  in  his  efforts 
to  make  for  himself  and  mate  a  home,  conceived  the  plan 
of  placing  a  round  section  of  a  small  tree  under  a  stone  or 
other  obstruction  to  lighten  the  burden  of  its  removal.  Thus 
was  made  the  first  step  toward  the  production  of  the  wheel 
and  axle,  the  basis  of  all  successful  land  transportation. 

The  next  step  was  taken  by  some  prehistoric  genius  who, 
in  an  effort  to  still  further  lighten  his  burdens,  with  infinite 
patience  and  labor,  produced  a  pair  of  rough  wheels  by 
either  burning  or  cutting  them  from  the  trunk  of  a  large 
tree  and  piercing  them  with  holes  for  an  axle.  Thus,  step 
by  step,  improvements  have  been  made  from  the  roller  and 
primitive  cart  and  rough  trails  of  our  cave  ancestors  to 
the  wonderful  railroads  and  palatial  cars  of  today.  We 
have  become  so  accustomed  to  their  use  and  presence  that 
few  stop  to  consider  their  origin  and  history  and  the  influ- 
ence they  have  contributed  to  the  progress  and  happiness 
of  mankind. 


THF  PAH  XA/AV  PAT1 


Today  we  are  more  in  need  of  transportation  facilities 
than  at  any  other  time  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

As  is  well  known,  all  the  products  of  nature  do  not  exist 
at  the  place  where  they  are  consumed,  but  must  be  trans- 
ported to  and  from  the  place  of  manufacture  before  they 
can  be  used  for  man's  wants.  This  makes  man  dependent 
upon  the  means  of  transportation  at  his  command. 

This  is  probably  best  illustrated  by  the  late  Otis  Tufton 
Mason,  Curator  of  the  Department  of  Ethnology,  U.  S. 
National  Museum,  who  in  one  of  his  reports  on  primi- 
tive travel  and  transportation  describes  the  first  sleeping 
car  by  a  picture  of  an  Indian  woman  with  a  sleeping  baby 
slung  upon  her  back.  When  we  compare  this  picture  with 
our  modern  sleeping  cars,  we  have  a  most  vivid  and  lasting 
impression  of  what  the  rail  and  railway  have  accomplished 
for  the  welfare  of  man. 

This  great  advance  is  the  aggregate  of  many  years' 
thought,  labor,  ingenuity,  and  inventive  skill  of  man.  And 
the  rail,  which  is  no  doubt  the  most  potent  factor  in  this 
great  advance,  has  passed  through  many  changes  in  form 
and  methods  of  manufacture.  From  the  very  beginning  of 
railway  development,  the  railway  men  have  never  been  able 
to  make  any  great  or  permanent  advance  until  the  rail  had 
first  been  improved  to  a  point  where  it  would  withstand 
the  additional  work  imposed  upon  it  by  the  increased  speed 
and  traffic.  Today  the  need  of  still  further  improvement 
in  the  way  of  heavier  sections  and  improved  form  is  more 
acute  than  at  any  time  in  its  history.  . 

In  this  brief  history  of  the  rail  I  have  not  attempted  to 
enter  to  any  great  extent  into  why  and  how  the  changes  in 
the  form  of  the  rails  were  made,  space  not  permitting. 

There  are  no  doubt  many  who  could  have  gotten  this 
history  up  in  a  much  better  form  than  I  have  done,  and 
my  only  excuse  is,  they  have  not  done  so. 

I  am  very  thankful  to  the  many  friends  who  have  so 
willingly  aided  me  in  obtaining  the  desired  information. 

GEORGE  P.  RAIDABAUGH. 

4 


RAILWAY  RAI 


AILWAYS  as  we  know  them,  first  came  into 
use  about  two  hundred  years  before  the  in- 
troduction of  the  steam  locomotive,  or  about 
the  year  1600.  The  collieries  in  the  north 
of  England  made  use  of  wooden  rail  tram 
or  wagon  ways  for  the  purpose  of  reducing 
the  labor  of  hauling  coal  from  the  pit's  mouth  to  the  place 
of  shipment. 

They  consisted  at  first  simply  of  rough  pieces  of  timber 
imbedded  in  the  roadway  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  a 
tolerably  smooth  track  for  the  wheels  of  the  carts  or  wagons. 
Later  sleepers  with  wooden  rails  were  used,  as  shown  in 
Fig.  1,  R-l. 

With  this  arrangement,  the  removal  of  a  broken  or  worn- 
out  rail  injured  the  sleeper  in  consequence  of  the  peg  holes 


JB ft 


1 ft 


Fig.  1 

becoming  too  large.    This  condition  was  improved  by  nail- 
ing an  upper  rail,  Fig.  2,  R-2,  on  the  lower  rail,  R-l,  so 


Fig.  2 

the  upper  rail  could  be  frequently  renewed  without  injury 
to  the  sleepers,  S. 

5 


From  descriptions  that  have  come  down  to  us  of  these 
old  tramways,  we  learn  that  the  benefit  to  be  derived  from 
the  use  of  iron  as  track  was  known  as  early  as  1600,  as 
the  following  abstract  from  an  early  writer  proves :  "When 
the  draft  was  harder  than  usual  in  consequence  of  a  steep 
ascent  or  a  sharp  curve  in  the  line,  friction  was  diminished 
by  nailing  to  the  wooden  rails  thin  strips  or  plates  of 
malleable  iron/'  (See  Fig.  3.)  But  we  should  remember 


Fig.  3 

that  at  that  time  these  strips  could  not  have  been  other 
than  roughly  forged,  such  as  today  would  be  consigned  to 
the  scrap  pile. 

Another  writer  in  1672  describes  a  wooden  railway  which 
he  had  seen  at  Newcastle,  England,  as  follows :  "The  man- 
ner of  the  carriage  is  by  laying  down  rails  of  timber  from 
the  colliery  to  the  river,  exactly  straight  and  parallel,  and 
bulky  carts  are  made  with  rowlets  fitting  these  rails  whereby 
the  carriage  is  so  easy  that  one  horse  will  draw  4  or  5  chal- 
drons of  coal"  (8  or  9  tons) . 

These  old  wooden  tramways  continued  in  use  for  more 
than  150  years  without  any  further  improvements,  and  it 
promises  to  be  a  very  interesting  study  to  trace  the  develop- 
ment of  the  railway  rail  from  these  crudely  forged  plates 
of  malleable  iron  which  went  into  use  over  250  years  ago, 
to  the  highly  finished  and  well  shaped  rail  of  today. 

During  the  period  that  intervened  between  these  wrooden 
tramways  and  the  introduction  of  iron  rails  there  were 
several  attempts  made  to  use  stone  rails  instead  of  the 
wooden  ones.  It  was  soon  found,  however,  that  what  the 
stone  ways  gained  in  durability  they  lost  in  smoothness. 

6 


RAILWAY 


The  first  great  advance  toward  our  present  system  of 
railways  was  by  the  introduction  of  cast  iron  plates  upon 
the  wooden  rails.  This  advance,  one  of  the  early  writers 
tells  us,  was  the  result  of  accident  rather  than  of  design: 
"About  the  year  1767  when  the  price  of  pig  iron  was  very 
low,  it  occurred  to  the  proprietors  of  the  Colebrook-Dale 
Iron  Works,  as  a  means  of  keeping  their  furnaces  at  work, 
to  cast  bars  in  such  a  form  as  to  admit  of  their  being  laid 
down  on  a  wooden  railway  in  use  at  the  works.  This,  it 
was  thought,  would  save  the  expense  of  repairs  to  the 
railway,  but  if  a  sudden  rise  should  take  place  in  the  price 
of  iron,  the  rail  (see  Fig.  4)  could  be  taken  up  and  sold  as 


5    FKqtT- 


f 


Fig.  4 


pig  iron.  These  plate  rails  were  5'  long,  4"  wide  and 
thick.  They  were  cast  with  three  countersunk  holes  in 
them  for  convenience  in  nailing  them  to  the  wooden 
rails." 

The  road  was  said  to  be  successful,  and  it  was  pointed 
out  as  an  advantage  (which  we  would  now  consider  to  be 
a  great  misfortune),  that  vehicles  could  be  turned  off  the 
track  with  great  ease  in  consequence  of  the  absence  of  a 
guiding  flange. 

Plate  rails  later,  when  wrought  iron  came  into  use,  were 
called  "strap  rails,"  and  continued  in  use,  to  some  extent 
at  least,  for  about  100  years. 


About  1776  the  Colebrook-Dale  rail  was  improved  by  the 
addition  of  an  upright  flange  (Fig.  5)  rising  3"  above  the 
path  of  the  wagon  wheels.  These  rails  were  laid  upon  cross 
sleepers  with  the  flanges  turned  inward.  The  design  was 


Fig.  5 

still  further  improved  in  1793  by  the  addition  of  brackets 
to  support  the  flange,  and  ribs  or  beads  cast  upon  the  under 
side  of  the  rail,  to  strengthen  it  between  the  stone  supports. 
These  stone  blocks  were  18"  to  20"  square  and  8"  to  10" 
deep.  Fig.  6  shows  end  view  of  the  rail  as  improved,  also 
the  manner  of  securing  the  rails  to  the  blocks.  This  was 


i 

1793                  !  !                    PVF.^O.B 
i  i 

i_  Yrtg^0  -r-. 

VI., 

—  -!  \  I  e 

^5t?5g 

V  -X^ooe^ 

Fig.  6 

done  with  spikes  driven  into  hard  wooden  plugs  which  were 
inserted  in  the  holes  B  in  the  stone  blocks.  However,  rails 
of  this  construction  did  not  prove  to  be  satisfactory,  as 
stones  and  dirt  would  accumulate  upon  the  tread  of  the 
rail.  This  caused  much  friction  and  when  higher  speeds 
were  required,  tended  to  throw  the  carriage  off  the  line. 

A  number  of  these  old  rails  are  in  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  Railroad  Company's  collection  of  old  railway  appli- 
ances. 

8 


The  defects  of  the  Colebrook-Dale  rails  were  remedied 
by  the  introduction  of  edge  rails.  Fig.  7  shows  one  of 
the  earliest  types  patented  in  England  in  1789  by  William 
Jessop.  This  is  a  "fish-bellied"  rail  and  was  supported 


I 


Fig.  7 


upon  stone  or  wooden  blocks,  the  rails  having  a  flat  base  for 
a  short  distance  at  each  end  where  they  rested  upon  the 
blocks  to  which  they  were  secured  in  the  same  way  as  the 
plate  rail. 


Fig.  8 

A  cast  iron  rail  used  in  1797  (Fig.  8)  was  supported  by 
cast  iron  chairs,  which  are  said  to  be  the  first  chairs  adopted. 
The  rails  were  secured  by  bolts  through  the  stem  of  the  rail, 
while  the  chairs  themselves  were  spiked  to  the  stone  blocks 
or  sleepers. 

Another  type  of  cast  iron  rail  introduced  in  1802  was 
cast  4'  6"  long,  and  was  of  an  oval  section,  the  large  diame- 
ter being  vertical.  (See  Fig.  9,  No.  1.)  Beneath  each  end 
of  the  rail  a  dovetailed  block,  A,  was  cast,  which  fitted  into 

9 


Fig.  9 


a  cast  iron  chair  or  sill,  B,  imbedded  in  the  roadway.  The 
wheel  had  a  grooved  tire  fitting  loosely  on  the  rail.  It  was 
soon  found,  however,  that  the  groove  became  so  deepened 
by  wear  as  to  fit  the  rail  tightly,  thus  causing  much  friction. 
An  attempt  was  made  to  remedy  this  fault,  by  making  the 
bearing  surface  of  the  rail  flat  and  the  wheel  to  correspond. 
(See  Fig.  9,  No.  2.) 


r 


Fig.  10  shows  a  cast  iron  rail  designed  in  1808  to  be  laid 
without  the  use  of  bolts  or  spikes.  Pins  at  the  point  A 
were  cast  on  the  under  side  of  the  rail,  at  the  ends  where 
they  rested  upon  the  stone  blocks  C,  in  which  holes  were 
drilled  to  fit  the  pins.  The  joints  between  the  ends  of  rails 
were  made  in  a  dovetailed  form  as  shown  at  B,  thus  doing 
away  with  the  necessity  of  bolts  and  spikes. 


Fig.  11 

A  cast  iron  plate  rail  (Fig.  11)  designed  in  1813  had  a 
curved  flange  with  a  bead  cast  on  the  under  side  and  was 
secured  to  the  stone  blocks  in  the  same  way  as  shown  in 
Fig.  6. 


Sec -P. 


Pl-«M      \J>« 


Fig.  12 
11 


T  H  F  PAH  WAY  I? A!  L 


In  Fig.  12  we  have  a  cast  iron  edge  rail  patented  in 
England  in  1816  by  George  and  Losh  Stephenson.  Wm. 
Strickland,  a  prominent  engineer  of  his  day,  describes  this 
rail  in  1826,  after  his  return  from  a  visit  to  England,  as  a 
"cast  iron  rail  4'  long,  fish-bellied,  5"  deep  at  the  center  A, 
and  2"  deep  at  the  ends  D,  D,  where  they  rest  in  the  chairs 
C.  The  ends  were  cast  solid  and  formed  to  make  a  half  lap 
joint  D,  secured  in  the  chairs  by  pin  E,"  which  in  some  of 
the  old  prints  of  this  rail  and  chairs,  is  shown  to  be  wooden. 

Cast  iron  rails  were  used  for  many  years  after  this  time. 
A  patent  was  granted  to  John  W.  Bay,  of  Harrisburg, 
Penna.,  in  1844  for  a  cast  iron  rail  to  be  cast  with  a  bar  of 
wrought  iron  in  the  head  for  strength. 

About  the  year  1846  the  three  cast  iron  rails  shown  in 
Fig.  13  were  proposed  for  use  upon  American  railroads. 


Fig.  IS 

These  rails  were  to  be  cast  10  feet  long.  The  manner  of 
securing  them  in  the  track  upon  longitudinal  sills  is  clearly 
shown  by  the  drawing. 

12 


THE  RAILW, 


We  have  not  found  that  there  were  a  great  many  of 
the  cast  iron  rails  used  by  our  early  American  railroads, 
but  we  do  know  that  a  part  of  what  is  now  a  branch  of  the 
Northern  Central  Railway,  running  from  Sunbury  to 
Shamokin,  Penna.,  was  first  laid  with  them. 

The  cast  iron  rails,  however,  were  not  without  strong 
advocates,  for  as  late  as  some  time  between  1846  and  1850, 
J.  C.  Trautwine,  a  prominent  railway  engineer  of  that  time, 
recommended  the  use  of  cast  iron  rails  upon  a  hundred 
miles  of  railway  he  was  then  constructing. 

Rails  of  malleable  iron  of  the  square  or  flat  form  were 
first  made  and  used  in  the  years  1808  to  1811,  this  being 
the  only  form  the  rolling  machinery  of  that  time  could 
produce.  (See  Fig.  14.) 


Fig.  U 

These  rails  were  flat  or  square  bars  of  iron,  shown  at 
A,  and  were  2"  to  3"  wide  and  %"  to  %"  thick  with  holes 
drilled  and  countersunk  for  nailing  them  to  the  wooden 
rails  B.  Rails  of  this  form  continued  in  use  in  this  country 
for  many  years,  and  are  known  in  history  as  the  "strap 
rail."  One  of  our  old  folk-lore  stories  says,  "If  when  hunt- 
ing up  the  history  of  our  ancestors  we  will  go  back  far 
enough  we  will,  no  doubt,  find  one  of  them  on  a  gallows." 
So  with  many  of  our  great  railroad  systems  of  today,  if 
they  go  back  they  will  find  a  "strap"  rail  at  the  beginning  of 
their  history. 

Fig.  15  is  a  section  of  track  on  the  Baltimore  &  Ohio  Rail- 
road in  1831,  showing  long  granite  slabs  substituted  for  the 

13 


wooden  rails.  These  slabs  were  dressed  to  shape  and  the 
holes  B  drilled  for  securing  the  "strap"  rails  A.  The  rails 
were  2%"  to  41/2"  wide  and  %"  to  %"  thick.  The  granite 
stringers  were  laid  in  trenches  partly  filled  with  broken 


Fig.  15 

stone.  Several  of  these  old  stone  stringers  with  the  strap 
rails  spiked  to  them  may  be  seen  at  the  National  Museum, 
Washington,  D.  C. 

In  Fig.  16  are  shown  sections  of  some  of  the  strap  rail 
used  on  the  Amboy  Division  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
in  1831,  previous  to  the  introduction  of  the  Stevens  section, 


r~t 


USED  ON    AMBOY   DIVISION     1831-1882 


Fig.  16 

now  known  as  the  "tee"  rail.  These  drawings  were  made 
from  sections  of  the  rails  preserved  by  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad  Company  at  Broad  Street  Station,  Philadelphia. 

The  flat  or  "strap"  rail  was  the  only  form  of  rail  that 
could  be  rolled  upon  American  mills  up  to  1844,  at  which 
time  there  were  probably  more  miles  of  track  of  this  type 
laid  in  the  United  States  than  all  others  combined.  These 

14 


rails  were  very  imperfect  and  difficult  to  keep  in  the  track, 
as  will  be  seen  by  the  following  abstract  from  a  New  York 
paper  of  May  20,  1844.  See  Swank's  "Iron  in  All  Ages." 

"RAILROAD  CALAMITY 

"The  cars  on  the  railroad  a  short  distance  east 
of  Rome,  New  York,  came  in  contact  with  a  snake 
head  on  Saturday  morning,  which  threw  several  of 
the  passenger  cars  and  the  mail  car  off  the  track. 
*  *  *  The  crash  was  tremendous  and  the  cars 
were  torn  to  splinters." 

When,  owing  to  the  constant  wheel  pressure,  the  "strap" 
rails  would  tear  loose  from  the  wooden  sills  (see  Fig.  14) 
and  follow  the  wheels,  frequently  with  sufficient  force  to 
penetrate  the  car  floor,  they  were  called  "snake  heads." 

As  late  as  1868,  there  were  4  miles  of  these  rails  laid 
upon  wood  stringers,  on  a  branch  of  the  Marietta  and  Cin- 
cinnati Railroad  between  Westborough  and  Hillsborough, 
Ohio,  which,  I  believe,  is  now  a  part  of  the  Baltimore  & 
Ohio  System. 


Many  attempts  were  made  to  form  a  cheap  and  durable 
rail  by  the  combination  of  wrought  and  cast  iron,  but  no 
plan  was  successful  until  about  1820,  when  the  method  of 
rolling  iron  into  any  required  shape  was  introduced.  With' 
this  improvement  in  the  method  of  rolling,  began  the  devel- 
opment of  the  wrought  iron  edge  rail,  the  "Birkenshaw" 
being  the  first  one  rolled,  a  patent  for  which  was  granted  to 
John  Birkenshaw,  of  the  Bedlington  Iron  Works,  England, 
by  the  English  Government,  October  20,  1820,  Patent  No. 
4503.  The  drawings  here  shown  in  Figs.  17  to  19  are 
copies  from  the  plates  accompanying  the  patent  specifica- 
tions which  may  be  seen  at  the  Patent  Office,  Washington, 
D.  C.  The  set  of  rolls,  Fig.  17,  is  no  doubt  the  first  ever 
made  and  used  in  the  manufacturing  of  shaped  wrought 
or  malleable  iron  rails. 


Mr.  Birkenshaw  desired  to  roll  the  rails  18'  long  to  ob- 
viate the  evils  of  the  great  number  of  joints  in  the  line, 
and  further  proposed  to  weld  the  ends  of  the  bars  together 
as  they  were  laid  down.  However,  I  do  not  think  this  was 
done,  as  I  have  found  no  mention  of  it  in  any  of  the  old 
descriptions  of  this  rail. 

Mr.  Birkenshaw  showed  considerable  ingenuity  in  the 
designing  of  this,  the  first  set  of  rail  rolls,  as  it  could  not 
be  much  improved  upon  today  for  rolling  bars  of  that 
shape  on  a  "two  high"  mill.  The  upper  surface  of  the 
rail  was  to  be  made  slightly  curved  to  reduce  friction,  and 

16 


THE  RAILWAY  RAIL 


was  to  be  supported  upon  stone  blocks  and  chairs,  the  joints 
to  be  secured  with  a  pin.  (See  Fig.  18,  Rail  and  Chair, 
No.  1.) 

Figs.  18  and  19  show  the  four  different  sections  of  shaped 
rails  as  covered  by  the  Birkenshaw  patent.  He  says  the 
wedge-shaped  rails  as  shown  by  Nos.  3  and  4  are  made 
in  that  shape  because  the  strength  of  a  rail  is  always  pro- 
portioned to  the  square  of  its  breadth  and  depth,  hence  the 


Fig.  19 

wedge  form  of  rail  possesses  all  the  strength  of  a  cube  equal 
to  its  square,  but  that  the  weight  of  metal  used  may  be 
reduced  still  further  and  sufficient  strength  retained  by 
forming  the  bars  or  rails  as  shown  by  Nos.  1  and  2.  He 
further  states  in  his  specifications  that  he  prefers  the  form 
as  shown  by  No.  1.  This  rail  (No.  1),  which  is  the  first 
rail  ever  rolled,  was  made  some  time  between  1820  and 


151 


IHJ 


1825.  It  was  first  used  on  the  Stockton  &  Darlington  Rail- 
road, England. 

By  1830  the  Birkenshaw  rail  had  become  changed  to  the 
"fish-bellied"  rail  as  shown  by  Fig.  20.  These  rails  were 
15'  to  18'  long,  divided  into  3'  fish-bellied  spaces.  They 
were  rolled  parallel  and  the  metal  sheared  out  to  form  the 
"fish-bellied"  spaces.  The  lower  drawing  shows  one-half  of 
one  of  the  spaces  and  section  of  rail  at  A  and  B. 

When  looking  up  the  history  of  this  rail  the  thought 
uppermost  in  my  mind  was  why  did  they  make  the  rail  in 
this  form,  as  it  is  a  very  difficult  one  to  roll.  From  what  I 
have  learned  about  them  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  "fish- 
bellied"  rail  came  into  use  through  the  views  held  by  some 
of  the  railway  engineers  of  that  day — that  a  railway  should 
be  of  equal  solidity  at  all  points  on  the  line,  and  because 
they  believed  the  rail  would  be  stiffer  and  more  unyielding 
at  the  points  where  it  rested  in  the  chairs  and  was  sup- 
ported upon  the  stone  blocks.  For  that  reason  it  would  be 
necessary  in  order  to  equalize  the  stiffness  of  the  line  to  take 
some  of  the  metal  from  the  rail  at  those  points. 

Wm.  B.  Adams  in  a  book  published  in  1862  states  that 
the  "fish-bellied"  rail  was  a  "mechanical  error" ;  that  it  was 
a  false  basis  to  assume  the  sleeper  and  stone  supports  to  be 
an  unyielding  fulcrum  instead  of  a  yielding  point.  This 
was  soon  discovered  and  the  rail  made  parallel  again. 

In  1830  the  Boston  and  Lowell  Railroad  was  laid  with 
this  rail.  One  of  the  original  rails  laid  upon  that  road  with 
the  cast  iron  chairs  and  wrought  iron  wedges  for  securing 
the  rail  in  the  chairs,  is  in  the  possession  of  the  estate  of 
the  late  Rufus  K.  Wood  at  Sparrow's  Point,  Md. 

The  next  rail  to  come  out  was  known  as  the  "Clarance" 
rail.  (See  Fig.  21.)  This  is  also  an  edge  rail  and  was 
rolled  as  early  as  1830.  A  number  of  our  early  American 
railroads  were  laid  with  this  rail,  among  them  the  Boston 
&  Lowell  (one  track),  the  Germantown  and  Norristown, 
and  the  Allegheny  Portage.  The  rail  here  shown  was  taken 

18 


from  a  piece  of  one  of  the  rails  laid  upon  the  latter  road. 
A  short  section  of  this  rail  has  been  preserved  by  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  Company  at  Broad  Street  Station,  Phila- 
delphia. I  also  have  a  short  piece  of  the  rail  that  was  laid 
on  the  Germantown  and  Norristown  road  in  1831. 


Fig.  21 

This  rail  was  said  to  be  an  improvement  on  the  first 
Birkenshaw  rail,  as  it  could  be  secured  in  the  shoes  or  chairs 
without  the  use  of  pins  at  the  joints.  The  small  drawing 
to  the  right  shows  the  rail  and  chair.  The  rail  was  held 
in  a  vertical  position  by  the  thin  iron  wedge  B,  the  lower 
projections  on  the  rail  preventing  it  from  lifting. 

It  was  later  found  that  the  driving  of  the  iron  wedge 
broke  a  great  many  of  the  chairs.  This  was  remedied  by 
changing  the  wedge  side  of  the  chair  to  take  a  wooden 
wedge  about  1*4"  thick,  which  soon  became  the  permanent 
practice. 

Between  the  time  this  rail  came  out  and  the  year  1840 
quite  a  number  of  designs  and  modifications  of  this  rail 
were  made  and  used.  (See  Fig.  28.) 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  TEE  RAIL 

The  "tee"  rail  now  in  general  use  is  an  American  inven- 
tion. In  September,  1830,  the  directors  of  the  Camden  and 

19 


!  WAY  PA! 


Amboy  Railroad  instructed  Robert  L.  Stevens,  president 
and  chief  engineer  of  that  road,  "to  visit  England  and  re- 
port on  railroad  matters  there/'  and  directed  him  "to  pur- 
chase all  iron  rails,  which  they  preferred  to  the  wooden 
rail  plated  with  strap  iron."  (See  Fig.  16.)  A  short  time 
later  Stevens  sailed,  and  during  the  voyage  he  designed 
the  first  "tee"  rail  (see  Fig.  22)  with  a  base.  It  is  said 
that  Stevens  designed  this  rail  by  whittling  it  out  of  wood 
until  he  got  one  to  suit  him.  He  was  familiar  with  the 
English  rails,  saw  that  they  required  expensive  chairs  to 
hold  them  in  the  track,  and  knew  that  they  were  not  adapted 
for  use  in  this  country,  where  iron  was  scarce  and  expensive. 


Fig.  22 

Stevens  added  the  base  to  the  English  "tee"  rail  (see 
Birkenshaw  and  Clarance  rails)  which  dispensed  with  the 
expensive  chairs.  He  also  designed  the  hook-headed  spike 
and  the  tongue  B  which  have  since  developed  into  the 
railroad  spike,  and  splice  bar  of  today. 

Fig.  22  shows  his  proposed  rail,  which  was  to  be  rolled 
with  the  projections  A  on  the  base  of  the  rail  at  every 

20 


two  feet  where  it  rested  on  the  supports  and  the  tongue 
B  on  the  end  to  join  the  rails  together.  He  did  not  find  it 
practical  to  have  the  rails  rolled  as  originally  designed  with 
the  projections  and  tongue  as  shown,  so  they  were  omitted 
before  he  could  find  anyone  who  would  undertake  to  roll 
them.  When  Stevens  found  that  it  was  not  practical  to 
have  the  rail  rolled  as  first  designed,  the  section  was 
changed.  It  has  been  somewhat  of  a  task  to  determine 
what  the  cross  section  of  the  first  "tee"  rail  was,  but  after 
a  careful  study  of  all  the  evidence  found  at  this  late  day, 
we  know  that  one  of  the  two  sections  in  Fig.  23  was  the 
first  "tee"  rail  rolled,  with  the  preference  largely  in  favor 


Fig.  28 

of  Section  B.  This  corresponds  more  fully  to  the  descrip- 
tions of  the  rail  laid  on  the  Camden  and  Amboy  road,  as 
given  by  the  historians  of  that  time,  than  any  other  rail 
we  have  found. 

The  section  B  conforms  very  closely  to  a  description  of 
the  "tee"  rail  laid  on  that  road  in  1831  in  Woods'  Treatise 
on  Railroads  published  in  1832,  which  says:  "The  rails 
were  of  rolled  iron  16'  long,  2%"  wide  on  top,  3%"  at  the 
bottom,  3y2"  deep,  the  neck  i/2"  thick,  the  weight  204 
pounds."  This  was  equivalent  to  39.18  pounds  per  yard. 
The  slight  difference  in  weight  could  easily  come  through 
the  reproduction  of  the  rail  from  the  badly  worn  and  rusted 

21 


I? AH  WAY  I? All 


section  B-l  in  Fig.  24,  which  was  the  only  piece  of  the  rail 
I  could  find,  and  is  in  the  possession  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad  Company. 

Tanner,  in  a  book  called  "Canals  and  Railroads  of  the 
United  States,"  published  in  1841,  in  describing  the  Camden 
and  Amboy  Railroad,  says  of  the  rail  used  upon  it,  "The 
rail  was  the  H  pattern  and  weighed  41  pounds  per  yard." 
He  gives  the  height  at  3%". 

The  sections  A-l  and  B-l  in  Fig.  24,  badly  worn  and 
rusted  as  they  are,  were  used  to  reconstruct  section  A  and 
B  in  Fig.  23.  By  their  aid  and  through  the  descriptions 


Fig.  24 


I  found  of  them,  some  of  which  I  .have  given,  I  believe 
that  the  sections  A  and  B  in  Fig.  23  are  as  near  accurate 
as  can  be  made  at  this  late  day,  of  the  first  "tee"  rails  made 
and  used.  The  tracings  of  the  two  rails  here  shown  were 
kindly  sent  to  me  by  Mr.  G.  W.  Whiteman,  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  Company.  These  two  and  several  others 
preserved  by  that  company  and  one  or  two  sections  at 
the  National  Museum,  are  all  that  I  was  able  to  find  of 
the  first  "tee"  rails,  and  they  were  all  badly  worn  and 
rusted. 

The  first  shipment  arrived  at  Philadelphia  on  the  ship 
Charlemagne,  May  16,  1831. 

22 


E  RAILWAY  RAIL 


The  following  is  an  abstract  from  the  letter  written  to 
the  English  iron  masters  by  Stevens: 

"Gentlemen :  At  what  rate  will  you  contract  to 
deliver  at  Liverpool,  say  from  500  to  600  tons  of 
railway  of  the  best  quality  iron  rolled  to  the  above 
(see  Fig.  22)  pattern  in  12  to  16  foot  lengths,  to 
lap  as  shown  in  the  drawing  with  one  hole  at  each 
end,  and  the  projections  on  the  lower  flange  (base) 
at  every  two  feet,  cash  on  delivery." 

Stevens  met  with  much  trouble  in  finding  anyone  who 
would  undertake  to  roll  the  rails  and  did  not  succeed  in 
finding  one  until  he  put  up  a  money  forfeit  which  should 
cover  any  damage  to  the  mill  while  rolling  them.  The 
limits  of  this  brief  sketch  will  not  permit  taking  up  that 
side  of  the  subject. 

Some  time  between  1831  and  1835  the  "U"  rail,  now 
known  as  the  "bridge"  rail,  came  out.  The  name  "bridge" 
rail  coming  from  the  custom  of  generally  laying  this  rail 
on  longitudinal  sills,  the  sills  resting  upon  sleepers,  which 
gave  to  the  track  somewhat  the  appearance  of  an  extended 
bridge. 


t 
••& 

,03.5 

\ 

1 

» 

" 

1 

:LL^- 

..  —    t    —  . 

^ 

Fig.  25 

This  section,  shown  in  Fig.  25,  is  a  copy  of  a  drawing 
sent  to  the  Franklin  Institute  by  J.  C.  Trautwine  in  1835 
and  marked  "In  use  on  the  Wilmington  and  Susquehanna 
Railroad."  This  section  is  of  interest,  as  it  fixes  the  early 
date  at  which  the  design  came  out. 

23 


I  have  not  been  able  to  find  out  positively  where  this 
rail  first  originated,  but  from  what  I  have  learned  of  it  I 
think  it  was  at  the  Dowlais  Iron  Works  in  Wales. 


Fig.  26 

The  "bridge"  rail  shown  in  Fig.  26  was  in  use  on  the 
Great  Western  Railroad,  Massachusetts,  in  1835. 

There  were  a  great  many  patterns  of  this  rail  in  use  dur- 
ing the  early  years  of  American  railroads,  and  a  considerable 
mileage  was  laid  with  them. 

In  1837  the  "Lock"  rail  (Fig.  27)  came  out.  At  first  it 
was  known  as  the  double  "tee"  rail,  but  now  known  as  the 
double  head  rail.  This,  unlike  the  Stevens  rail,  did  not  come 
into  existence  at  the  first  attempt,  but  is  a  development  of 
the  Birkenshaw  rail.  As  it  was  found  that  the  Birkenshaw 
rails,  with  the  narrow  base  where  they  rested  in  the  chairs, 


"4 

*v 

^ 

• 

/ 

v__ 

"\ 

Fig.  27 

•  2^3  • 

24 

THF  RAILWAY  RAIL 


MSI 


0 


MS  4- 


';*• 


«2\« 


*5 


25 


THE  RAILWAY  PAH 


quickly  destroyed  both  the  rail  and  chairs  at  these  points, 
the  "Lock"  rail  was  devised  to  overcome  this  fault  by  in- 
creasing the  width  of  the  lower  head. 

It  was  thought  at  first  that  the  increased  width  of  the 
lower  head  would  not  only  remedy  the  fault,  but  would 
permit  of  reversing  the  rail,  when  the  top,  or  working  head, 
became  worn  out.  It  was  soon  found  this  could  not  be  done 
successfully,  as  the  rails  still  wore  badly  at  the  points  where 
they  rested  upon  the  cast  iron  chairs.  This  resulted  in  the 
adoption  of  a  rail  similar  to  No.  2  (Fig.  27),  known  as  the 
"Bull  Head"  rail,  with  the  lower  head  the  smaller,  which 
permitted  of  using  more  metal  in  the  top  head  for  traffic 
wear. 


Fig.  29 

These  two  types  of  rails  are  still  very  popular  with  Eng- 
lish railroad  men  and  are  largely  used  at  this  time. 

We  have  now  shown  all  of  the  different  types  of  rails 
that  were  used  upon  steam  railroads  prior  to  1844,  when 
we  began  to  roll  heavy  shaped  rails  in  America.  All  of 
them,  except  the  Stevens  double  head  and  "bull  head"  rails, 
have  since  gone  out  of  use. 

Fig.  28  shows  a  few  of  the  many  changes  through  which 
the  original  Birkenshaw  rail  went,  while  developing  into 
the  British  Standard  Bull  Head  rail  of  1905. 

At  the  beginning  of  1844  there  were  4185  miles  of  rail- 
roads in  America.  All  the  rails  used  upon  them,  except 
"strap"  rails  and  a  few  cast  iron  rails,  were  imported 

26 


JLWAY  RAIL 


from  England.  The  manufacture  of  heavy  wrought  iron 
rails  in  this  country  was  commenced  in  that  year  at  the 
Mount  Savage  Rolling  Mill,  Allegany  County,  Md.  There, 
at  some  time  between  April  and  November,  were  rolled  the 
first  edge  rails  ever  made  in  America.  They  were  of  the 
"U"  or  bridge  section  known  as  the  "Evans"  pattern  of  the 
Dowlais  Iron  Works  and  weighed  40  pounds  per  yard.  This 
rail  was  awarded  a  silver  medal  by  the  Franklin  Institute 
at  St.  Louis  in  November,  1844.  The  following  is  a  copy  of 
the  proceedings  of  the  Institute,  Exhibit  No.  2705 : 

"A  bar  of  railroad  iron  of  the  "U"  form  rolled 
by  the  Mount  Savage  Iron  Works  near  Frostburg, 
Md.,  and  forwarded  by  Col.  Young,  manager.  This 
bar  is  18%  feet  long  and  weighs  40  pounds  per 
lineal  yard.  It  is  part  of  a  lot  of  several  hundred 
recently  rolled  there  for  a  branch  of  the  Baltimore 
and  Ohio  Railroad  leading  to  the  works.  This  bar 
is  among  the  first  early  rails  yet  rolled  in  the 
United  States  and  it  demonstrates  beyond  the 
reach  of  cavil  that  edge  rails  can  be  well  manu- 
factured in  America. 

"This  bar  is  well  proportioned,  sound  and  well 
finished.  It  is  the  first  ever  exhibited  here  of 
American  makes,  and  we  hail  it  with  pleasure  as 
the  beginning  of  a  new  manufacture,  and  award 
it  a  silver  medal. 

"JOHN  WEIGAND, 

"Chairman  of  Committee." 

Fig.  29  shows  the  rail  as  reconstructed  from  descriptions 
found  of  it.  The  tracing  in  Fig.  30  and  one  other  piece  of 
the  rail  equally  as  badly  worn  and  rusted,  are  all  I  could 
find  of  the  first  edge  rail  rolled  in  America,  as  we  know  the 
section  shown  in  Fig.  29  to  be. 

We  cannot  help  but  wonder  what  Mr.  Weigand  would 
say  if  he  were  living  today  and  could  see  the  wonderful 

27 


THE3S||LWAY 


"manufacture,"  as  he  called  it,  that  has  grown  up  from 
the  first  shaped  rail  rolled  in  America. 

Swank  states,  "About  500  tons  of  this  pattern,  weighing 
42  pounds  per  yard,  were  laid  in  1844  on  a  part  of  the 
road  then  being  built  between  Mount  Savage  and  Cumber- 
land" (Baltimore  &  Ohio  R.  R.).  Soon  afterwards,  rails 
weighing  52  pounds  per  yard  were  rolled  at  Mount  Savage 
Rolling  Mill  for  the  road  leading  from  Fall  River  to  Boston, 


Fig.  SO 

This  52-pound  rail  has  been  given  the  credit,  by  some 
writers,  of  being  the  first  rail  rolled  in  this  country.  This 
is  evidently  a  mistake,  as  all  the  evidence  points  clearly  to 
the  rail  shown  in  Fig.  29  as  being  the  first  heavy  shaped 
rail  rolled  in  America. 

The  first  "tee"  rails  made  in  America  were  rolled  at  the 
Montour  Rolling  Mill,  Danville,  Penna.,  in  October,  1845. 


This  mill  was  built  especially  for  rolling  rails.     The  first 
rail  rolled  was  a  section  of  the  "tee"  rail  known  as  the 


Fig.  32 

"pearhead"  type.     We  know  that  the  rail  shown  in  Fig. 
31  is  not  a  correct  section  of  this  rail,  as  all  records  of  it 

29 


have  been  lost  or  forgotten,  but  I  learned  from  some  of  the 
men  who  worked  in  the  mill  when  it  first  started,  that  it 
was  a  "pearhead"  rail  with  the  ends  of  the  flanges  %"  to 
%"  thick,  and  a  very  heavy  web.  The  rail  which  I  have 
shown  above  corresponds  more  closely  to  this  description 


than  any  other  of  the  old  "pearhead"  rails  I  have  found, 
and  therefore  I  have  shown  it  as  a  type  of  the  first  "tee" 
rail  rolled  in  America. 

Rails  of  this  pattern  were  very  popular  during  the  first 
twenty  years  of  American  railmaking,  during  which  period 
a  great  many  different  patterns  were  rolled  and  laid  upon 

30 


our  railroads.  The  principal  cause  for  this  was  that  the 
designing  of  the  rail  sections  was  left  largely  to  the  mill 
men,  who  would  naturally  design  only  such  sections  as 
were  easy  to  roll. 

I  have  not  found  that  our  railway  engineers  were  tak- 
ing any  great  interest  in  the  improvement  of  the  rail  sec- 
tion previous  to  1865,  about  twenty  years  after  we  began 
to  roll  rails. 

The  sections  shown  in  Fig.  32  are  several  of  the  various 
shapes  the  "tee"  rail  assumed  in  the  twenty  years  following 
the  beginning  of  their  manufacture  in  this  country. 

The  period  between  1844  and  1865  was  very  prolific  in 
the  production  of  compound  rails.  (Fig.  33.)  These  rails 
were  laid  in  the  track  with  the  several  parts  arranged  to 
break  joints.  When  new  they  made  a  splendid  track,  but 
it  was  soon  found  that  the  several  parts  of  the  rail  could 
not  be  kept  tight,  the  bolts  and  rivets  which  held  them 
together  wearing  out  very  rapidly.  A  considerable  mileage 
of  these  rails  was  laid,  but  as  they  could  not  be  made  to 
stand  the  test  of  service,  they  have  long  since  gone  out  of 
use,  and  for  this  reason  I  have  not  given  them  much 
attention.  Not  so  with  the  inventors,  however,  who  have 
not  yet  given  up  all  hope  of  making  a  compound  rail  that 
will  stand  the  test,  as  many  useless  patents  have  been  and 
are  still  being  granted. 

The  period  of  the  greatest  importance  in  the  history  of 
the  rail  was  between  the  years  1844  and  1854,  as  during 
that  time  the  Bessemer  process  of  making  steel  was  per- 
fected. It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  this,  the  second  great 
epoch  in  the  history  of  the  railway  rail,  like  the  first,  was 
largely  the  result  of  accident  rather  than  of  design  (see 
Fig.  4),  as  neither  of  the  two  men  who  were  most  promi- 
nent in  the  development  of  the  Bessemer  process  began  to 
experiment  with  the  thought  or  expectation  of  making  steel. 

William  Kelly,  a  resident  of  Pittsburgh,  Penna.,  began 
his  experiments  at  Eddysville,  Ky.,  in  1844,  with  the  idea 

31 


RAILWAY 


in  view  of  refining  and  decarbonizing  melted  cast  iron  with 
the  use  of  an  air  blast,  and  by  that  means  saving  the  fuel 
required  in  refining  the  iron  for  his  forge. 

Henry  Bessemer  began  his  experiments  in  1854  after 
holding  a  conversation  with  Napoleon  III,  who  had  lately 
become  Emperor  of  France.  Napoleon  in  the  conversation 
complained  to  Bessemer  about  the  poor  quality  of  metal 
used  in  making  cannon.  At  his  suggestion,  Bessemer  at 
once  began  experimenting  in  London  on  making  a  better 
quality  of  iron.  In  1855  Bessemer  says  "the  idea  struck 
me  of  making  malleable  iron  by  introducing  air  into  the 
fluid  metal."  We  see  from  the  above  that  neither  Kelly 
nor  Bessemer  began  with  the  thought  of  making  steel. 
Kelly  worked  with  the  expectation  of  developing  a  process 
of  refining  iron  without  the  use  of  fuel,  and  Bessemer  with 
the  end  in  view  of  making  a  better  grade  of  iron  cannon. 
But  the  ways  of  Providence  are  beyond  the  ken  of  mortal 
mind.  That  these  experiments  which  practically  began 
on  the  part  of  Bessemer  (whose  name  the  process  now 
bears)  in  the  interest  of  war,  should  result  in  the  one  in- 
vention of  the  ages,  that  of  making  cheap  steel,  which  has 
probably  done  more  to  promote  the  peace  and  happiness 
of  mankind  than  any  other  one  invention  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  further  emphasizes  the  fact,  "there  is  a 
Divinity  that  shapes  our  ends,  rough  hew  them  how  we 
may." 

Kelly  and  Bessemer  both  failed  to  obtain  any  successful 
results  in  making  steel  up  to  the  beginning  of  1857,  when 
the  third  man,  Robert  F.  Mushet,  of  England,  supplied 
the  missing  link  in  the  chain  by  the  invention  of  a  process 
for  recarbonizing  the  melted,  desiliconized  and  decarbon- 
ized iron,  as  produced  by  the  Bessemer  process  at  that  time. 
This  perfected  the  Bessemer  and  Kelly  process,  and  from 
that  time  we  can  say  cheap  steel  became  a  commercial  pro- 
duct. Early  in  1857  Mushet  completed  his  invention  and 
made  the  first  Bessemer  steel  rail.  (See  Fig.  34.) 

32 


THE  RAILWAY  RAIL 


Pending  the  publication  of  Mushet's  patent  early  in  1857, 
and  during  the  erection  for  him  of  a  blowing  apparatus 
and  small  converter,  Mushet  obtained  from  the  Ebbw  Vale 
Iron  Company  a  small  supply  of  Bessemerized  hematite  cast 
iron.  This  he  melted  in  ordinary  steel  melting  pots,  adding 
to  the  44  pound  charge  of  each  pot,  when  melted,  2  pounds 
of  melted  spiegeleisen.  From  this  mixture,  ingots  of  600 
to  700  pounds  were  cast.  One  of  the  ingots  was  sent  to  the 
Ebbw  Vale  Iron  Works  and  rolled  into  a  double-headed  rail, 
which  was  sent  to  the  Derby  Railway  Station  on  the  Mid- 
land Railway. 


Fig.  34 


This  rail  was  laid  there  early  in  1857,  and  was  in  use 
for  sixteen  years.  History  tells  us  that  in  that  time  more 
than  1,125,000  trains  and  a  like  number  of  detached  engines 
and  tenders  passed  over  it.  I  have  made  several  unsuccess- 
ful efforts  to  obtain  a  cross  section  of  this  rail.  The  two 
rails  in  Fig.  34,  however,  are  iron  sections  that  were  being 
rolled  in  England  at  that  time,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that 
the  first  Bessemer  steel  rail  was  like  one  of  them,  or 
nearly  so. 

Shortly  after  the  first  Bessemer  steel  rail  was  produced 
in  England,  Bessemer  steel  rails  were  manufactured  in 

33 


30HE  RAILW, 


commercial  quantities,  and  the  steel  rail  industry  came 
into  existence. 

It  was  not  until  seven  years  later  that  there  was  any 
Bessemer  steel  made  in  America.  The  first  Bessemer  steel 
in  this  country  was  produced  at  a  small  experimental  plant 
established  at  Wyandotte,  Mich.  The  first  steel  was  made 
in  1864,  and  the  first  Bessemer  steel  rails  rolled  in  America 
were  rolled  at  the  North  Chicago  Rolling  Mill  on  the  24th 
day  of  May,  1865,  from  ingots  cast  at  the  experimental 
works,  Wyandotte,  William  Durfee,  superintendent.  The 
following  is  an  abstract  from  a  letter  of  0.  W.  Potter,  of 
the  Chicago  Works,  to  Durfee,  two  days  after  the  first  rails 
were  rolled: 

"OFFICE  OF  THE 
"CHICAGO  ROLLING  MILL. 

"May  26,  1865. 
"My  DEAR  DURFEE: 

"I  regret  very  much  you  could  not  have  been 
here,  particularly  to  see  how  well  your  steel  be- 
haved, and  you  should  allow  me  to  congratulate 
you  upon  its  entire  success.  The  hammer  was  alto- 
gether too  light,  of  course,  and  it  took  more  time 
than  otherwise  would  to  draw  the  ingots  down, 
yet  all  the  pieces  worked  beautifully,  and  we  made 
six  good  rails  from  the  ingots  sent  over,  not  one 
bad  in  any  respect. 

"Yours,  etc., 

"0.  W.  POTTER." 

I  met  with  considerable  trouble  in  my  efforts  to  obtain 
a  cross  section  of  this,  the  first  Bessemer  steel  rail  rolled 
in  America.  (See  Fig.  35.)  After  writing  to  a  number 
of  the  men  who  were  prominent  in  the  early  development 
of  the  Bessemer  process  in  this  country,  I  finally  succeeded, 

34 


through  the  courtesy  of  D.  S.  Mathias,  of  the  Illinois  Steel 
Company,  who  in  reply  to  a  letter  of  inquiry,  wrote: 

"ILLINOIS  STEEL  COMPANY. 

December  8,  1908. 

"Your  very  interesting  letter  of  November  22nd 
received,  and  contents  noted.  I  have  prepared  a 
blue  print  giving  dimensions  of  the  Delano  and 
McLure  rails  made  by  us  for  the  C.  B.  &  Q.  R.  R. 
in  1888.  The  other  section  on  the  blue  print  is 
the  iron  section  that  they  were  rolling  at  the  North 
Chicago  Mill  when  they  rolled  the  six  rails  you 
speak  of  in  1865.  They  did  not  turn  special  rolls 
to  roll  the  steel  rails,  but  just  used  the  same  rolls 
that  they  rolled  the  iron  rails  in  at  that  time.  The 
rails  were  rolled  at  the  North  Works.  I  was  rolling 
at  the  Union  Works  at  the  time  and  know  the 
above  to  be  facts. 

"Yours  truly, 

"D.  S.  MATHIAS, 

"Superintendent." 

James  M.  Swank,  in  his  history  of  "Iron  in  All  Ages," 
says:    "The  first  Bessemer  steel  rails  rolled  upon  order  in 

35 


THE  RAILWAY  RAIL 

••_•-__._ —       .  —  -—..-     .  —  -__.. 


the  United  States  were  rolled  at  the  Cambria  Works,  in 
August,  1867." 

R.  W.  Hunt,  in  an  address  delivered  before  the  Ameri- 
can Society  of  Mechanical  Engineers,  said :  "I  have  already 
placed  upon  record  in  a  lecture  before  the  Franklin  Insti- 
tute, Philadelphia,  January  21,  1889,  that  the  first  com- 
mercial rolling  of  steel  rails  was  at  the  Cambria  Works  in 
August,  1867,  on  an  order  for  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 


Fig.  36 

Company  from  steel  made  by  the  Pennsylvania  Steel  Com- 
pany at  their  Steelton  plant.  These  rails  were  rolled  on 
a  'three  high'  21"  train." 

At  first  the  steel  ingots  were  drawn  into  blooms  under 
steam  hammers.  George  Fritz,  superintendent  of  the  Cam- 
bria Works,  concluded  that  this  was  not  the  proper  manner 
of  treating  the  material  and  A.  L.  Holley,  then  in  charge 
of  the  Pennsylvania  Steel  Works,  sustaining  Fritz  in  his 
experiments,  had  ingots  cast  8%"  square,  which  were 
bloomed  in  a  set  of  blooming  rolls  prepared  by  the  latter, 
and  placed  in  one  set  of  the  21"  rail  train  housings.  The 
ingots  were  rolled  to  6%"  square,  recharged  in  the  heating 
furnaces,  wash  heated,  and  then  rolled  into  rails.  This  prac- 
tice was  successful,  and  I  believe  this  was  the  first  cogging 
or  blooming  mill. 

36 


The  section  shown  in  Fig.  36  is  of  the  first  Bessemer  steel 
rail  rolled  on  order.  This  was  secured  through  the  courtesy 
of  H.  H.  Weaver,  assistant  to  the  general  manager  of  the 
Cambria  Steel  Company,  and  is  their  old  section  No.  29. 

With  the  rolling  of  this  rail  in  August,  1867,  began  what 
in  a  few  years  was  destined  to  become  a  great  industry. 
The  growth  was  slow  at  first.  In  that  year  there  were 
rolled  2550  tons;  in  1868—7225;  1869—9650;  1870—34,000; 
1871—38,250;  1872—94,070  tons.  It  was  not  until  1873 
that  we  reached  a  production  of  over  100,000  tons,  rolling 
in  that  year  128,000  tons,  but  by  1880  the  annual  produc- 
tion reached  almost  1,000,000  tons.  In  this  short  sketch 


Fig.  87 

of  the  steel  rail  industry,  we  have  not  space  to  speak  of 
the  many  heartbreaking  experiences  and  failures  met  with 
by  the  men  who  were  prominent  in  the  work  of  developing 
the  Bessemer  process  in  this  country.  R.  W.  Hunt  in  his 
history  of  the  Bessemer  manufacture  sums  them  all  up  in 
one  sentence :  "But  I  do  know  from  the  Wyandotte,  to  say 
nothing  of  later  experiences,  that  it  required  faith  made 
perfect  to  carry  one  through  the  sea  which  seemed  to  be 
bounded  by  no  shore." 

On  the  preceding  pages  we  have  endeavored  to  show  the 
gradual  development  of  the  rail  from  the  beginning  to  the 
advent  of  Bessemer  steel  in  1867.  The  American  develop- 

37 


RAILWAY  RAIL 


ment  of  the  rail  section  really  dates  from  that  time.  Before 
that  only  a  few  efforts  had  been  made  in  that  direction, 
some  by  A.  L.  Holley,  almost  alone  among  the  steel  men, 
and  by  Ashbel  Welch,  who  was  among  the  first  to  take  a 
belated  interest  in  this  matter.  In  1865  he  designed  a  rail 
very  much  like  that  in  Fig.  36,  and  a  few  years  later,  the 
rail  shown  in  Fig.  37,  the  first  of  the  thin  flanged  type. 

Welch  says  of  this  rail:  "That  previous  to  1867  the 
steel  rails  laid  down  in  this  country,  made  like  the  iron  rail 
sections  then  in  use,  were  unnecessarily  heavy,  and  so  pro- 
portioned that  much  of  the  metal  did  no  good,  and  I  deter- 
mined to  try  a  section  in  which  all  the  metal  possible  should 


Fig.  38 

be  in  the  head."  He  further  says  in  his  Memoir  attached 
to  the  report  that  he  met  with  considerable  trouble  to  place 
a  contract  for  these  rails  as  the  rail  makers  were  not 
inclined  to  risk  the  rolling  of  them  on  account  of  the 
extremely  thin  flanges,  and  that  after  five  or  six  years  of 
use  none  of  them  have  failed  in  the  base.  He  also  stated 
at  this  time  that  he  would  be  in  favor  of  placing  50  per 
cent,  of  the  total  metal  of  the  rail  in  the  head. 

By  1874  the  idea  advanced  by  Welch  a  few  years  pre- 
viously, that  all  the  metal  possible  should  be  placed  in  the 

38 


THE  RAILWAY  RAIL 


head  of  the  rail,  began  to  take  hold  of  our  railroad  engi- 
neers, and  in  that  same  year  Octave  Chanute  published  the 
rail  shown  as  No.  1  in  Fig.  38.  This  type  soon  became  very 
popular  and  we  find  that  there  were  many  different  patterns 
of  this  rail  rolled  and  used  in  the  next  twenty  years.  No.  2 
in  this  figure  is  a  later  development  and  I  have  found  some 
of  the  "Chanute"  rails  with  as  much  as  53  per  cent,  of  the 
total  metal  in  the  head. 

In  a  short  time  rails  of  this  type  were  widely  used  and 
became  known  as  the  "Chanute"  rail.    But  they  were  not 


Fig.  89 

without  opposition,  as  these  large  headed  and  thin  flanged 
rails  soon  started  a  controversy  between  the  railroad  engi- 
neers and  the  rail  makers  as  to  their  merits  and  demerits, 
which  continued  for  many  years,  and  in  fact,  at  this  time 
is  not  finally  settled.  Notwithstanding  the  opposition  to 
this  design  many  thousand  tons  have  been  made  and  put 
in  the  tracks  since  1874,  and  there  are  many  still  in  use. 
The  No.  1  rail  shown  is  undoubtedly  a  development  of 
that  shown  in  Fig.  35,  as  the  first,  Bessemer  steel  rail  rolled 
in  the  United  States,  with  its  flanges  somewhat  thinner. 

When  once  the  railroad  men  began  to  improve  the  rail, 
they  went  at  it,  as  the  old  saying  is,  "with  hammer  and 

39 


tongs,"  as  we  find  among  the  old  templets  and  section  books 
in  our  possession  over  60  different  sections  of  the  "Chanute" 
rail  alone,  to  say  nothing  of  the  many  other  types. 

At  the  same  time  Chanute  brought  out  his  rail,  R.  H. 
Sayer  designed  the  rail  shown  as  No.  1,  Fig.  39.  The 
"Chanute"  and  "Sayer"  rails  were  of  the  very  few  made 
to  this  time  with  a  bevel  to  the  sides  of  the  head. 

It  is  a  singular  coincidence  that  Chanute  and  Sayer,  each 
without  any  knowledge  of  what  the  other  was  doing,  should 


Fig.  40.    Showing  the  60  and  90  Pound  Sections 


arrive  at  practically  the  same  results,  so  far  as  the  wearing 
surface  of  the  rail  heads  was  concerned.  The  heads  of  these 
two  rails  were  the  outcome  of  a  series  of  experiments  and 
examinations  of  a  large  number  of  worn  rail  heads  on  the 
part  of  both  men,  and  from  these  experiments  and  study, 
the  two  rails  were  designed. 

Some  years  later  M.  N.  Forney  designed  the  rail  shown  as 
No.  2.  This  rail  has  more  bevel  to  the  side  of  the  head  than 
either  the  "Chanute"  or  "Sayer"  rails.  The  "Sayer"  and 
"Forney"  rails  never  became  as  popular  as  the  "Chanute" 
rail,  although  there  were  some  10  or  12  different  sections  of 

40 


RAILWAY  RAIL 


them  made  and  used,  but  at  the  present  time  they  are  not 
in  use  to  any  great  extent. 

Chanute  said  that  at  the  time  he  designed  the  60  pound 
rail  (Fig.  39),  for  the  Erie  Railroad  in  1874,  there  were 
in  use  on  that  road,  12  patterns  of  steel  rail,  29  patterns 
of  iron  rail,  and  96  different  styles  of  joint  fixtures  and 
rail  fastening  devices.  From  this  we  can  see  how  utterly 
impossible  it  would  be  to  attempt  to  do  more  in  this  short 
sketch  than  to  show  a  few  of  the  most  prominent  types  and 
patterns  of  rails  that  were  in  use  on  our  railroads. 

At  the  1888  meeting  of  the  Institute  of  Mining  Engineers, 
Robert  W.  Hunt,  one  of  the  most  prominent  pioneers  in  the 
Bessemer  steel  rail  trade,  presented  a  set  or  series  of  rail 
sections  as  standard,  consisting  of  60,  65,  70,  75,  80,  85 
and  90  pound  rail.  (See  Fig.  40.) 

The  seven  sections  were  all  of  the  same  design  and  with 
nearly  the  same  proportion  of  metal  in  the  several  parts, 
head,  web,  and  base.  This  close  adherence  to  the  one  de- 
sign gave  to  them  as  a  series,  an  appearance  that  could 
not  be  other  than  attractive.  This  action  on  the  part  of 
Hunt  in  presenting  this  series  of  rail  sections,  no  doubt 
had  an  important  bearing  upon  the  adoption  of  a  series  of 
standard  rail  sections  a  few  years  later.  This  was  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  American  rail  designing  that  a  series 
of  sections  had  been  presented  in  a  practical  and  attractive 
manner,  and  was  a  decided  advance  over  anything  that  had 
yet  been  done  toward  originating  a  series  of  rail  sections 
that  could  or  would  be  accepted  as  standard  by  the  railroad 
companies  and  the  rail  makers.  Notice  the  close  resem- 
blance of  these  rails  to  the  A.  S.  C.  E.  rails,  which  finally 
became  the  standard  sections  in  1893. 

P.  H.  Dudley,  a  prominent  railroad  engineer,  and  one 
with  experience  such  as  comes  to  few  men  in  the  designing 
and  making  of  rails,  in  1883  designed  the  80  pound  rail 
shown  as  No.  1,  in  Fig.  41,  for  the  New  York  Central  and 
Hudson  River  Railroad.  At  the  meeting  of  the  American 

41 


THF  PAMWAYPAII 


Institute  of  Mining  Engineers,  in  1890,  Dudley  said  of  this 
rail:  "It  was  the  pioneer  of  the  broad  shallow  head  and 
thick  base  for  heavy  rails." 

At  the  same  meeting  of  this  Institute,  Dudley  presented 
a  paper  on  a  system  of  rail  sections  in  series  from  60  to 
105  pounds  per  yard,  and  stated  when  presenting  his  pro- 
posed sections :  "According  to  the  diagrams  of  several  roads 


Fig.  41. 

in  regard  to  the  renewal  of  rails,  the  least  wear  takes  place, 
as  a  general  rule,  upon  the  tangents  away  from  the  stations, 
increasing  on  the  gradient  tangents.  On  curves  the  wear 
is  even  greater  than  on  gradient  tangents,  and  greatest 
where  curve  gradients  occur.  The  wear  on  rails  on  curves 
is  of  two  classes.  First,  the  ordinary  wear  on  the  surface 
of  the  rail  augmented  by  longitudinal  and  transverse  slip- 
ping of  the  wheels;  second,  a  severe  abrasion  or  cutting  on 
the  inner  head  of  the  outside  rail.  I  have  designed  the  rail 
sections  to  which  attention  is  here  called,  in  series  of  three 
each  to  provide  for  the  unequal  wear  on  the  various  por- 
tions of  the  road.  The  rails  of  each  series  are  designated 
by  letters  A,  B,  C,  D,  and  E,  and  the  weight  of  each  section 
increasing  5  pounds.  In  the  first  section  of  the  series  is 

42 


E  RAILW^ 


the  light;  the  second,  medium;  the  third,  heavy."  This 
classification  is  shown  by  a  prefix  to  the  letter  of  each  rail. 
In  Fig.  41,  No.  2,  the  75  pound  rail  of  this  series  is  shown. 
The  Dudley  rail  soon  became  quite  popular  and  many  of 
them  are  being  made  at  the  present  time. 

In  1887  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company  adopted 
the  85  pound  rail  shown  in  Fig.  42  as  their  standard,  and  in 
1892  the  100  pound  rail  was  adopted. 


Fig. 


In  the  contention  between  the  railroad  engineers,  the 
engineering  societies  and  rail  manufacturers,  as  to  the  rela- 
tive merits  of  the  large  head  and  of  the  small  head  rails, 
the  sections  in  Fig.  42  are  usually  classed  with  the  former. 
But  when  they  are  compared  to  the  average  rail  designed 
and  rolled  in  this  country  since  1866,  1  find  them  to  be  about 
the  average,  so  far  as  the  percentage  of  metal  used  in  the 
several  parts  of  the  rail,  head,  web,  and  base  is  concerned. 
For  the  purpose  of  comparison,  I  took  45  different  sections 
that  have  been  made  since  1866,  including  a  number  of  each 
of  the  types  then  in  use.  These  sections  when  figured  out 
gave  an  average  distribution  of  metal  in  the  several  parts 
as  follows:  head,  47.67%;  web,  19.08%;  base,  34.25%.  By 

43 


1C 


I— V  V/-\ 


an  examination  of  the  figures  in  Fig.  42  we  find  that  they 
do  not  differ  by  more  than  1  per  cent,  from  the  average  of 
the  45  sections. 

These  two  rails  continued  in  use  up  to  1907  as  the  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  standard  rail,  but  they  have  now  been 
superseded  by  the  new  sections  with  a  heavy  base. 

In  1893,  what  probably  was  the  most  popular  series  of 
rails  that  ever  came  out  was  introduced  by  the  American 
Society  of  Civil  Engineers,  and  soon  became  known  as  the 
"A.  S.  C.  E."  sections.  In  1885  this  Society  appointed  a 
committee  to  consider  and  report  at  a  future  meeting,  on 


Fig.  43 

the  proper  relation  to  each  other  of  the  rail  head  and  car 
wheel.  In  1890  this  committee  was  supplemented  by  a 
larger  one,  retaining  a  number  of  the  original  members 
of  the  1885  committee.  This  new  committee  was  then  in- 
structed to  prepare  and  submit  a  report  upon  a  series  of 
rail  sections  from  40  to  100  pounds  per  yard  in  steps  of 
5  pounds,  which  could  be  adopted  as  the  American  stan- 
dard and  by  that  means,  in  time,  reduce  the  large  number 
of  sections  in  use  on  our  railroads. 

It  has  been  a  very  interesting  and  instructive  study  to 
read  over  the  reports  of  this  committee  as  submitted  to 

44 


RAILWAY  RAIL 


the  Society  during  the  eight  years  they  were  at  work  on 
this  problem.  At  the  1890  meeting,  when  the  later  com- 
mittee was  appointed,  one  of  the  members,  S.  S.  Morison, 
moved  that  each  member  be  requested  to  prepare  a  design 
for  the  series  of  sections,  these  sections  to  be  prepared 
regardless  of  any  former  instructions  and  to  be  transmitted 
to  the  secretary  by  the  first  of  December  of  that  year. 
This  resolution  was  adopted,  and  at  the  next  meeting  of 
the  Society,  ten  sets  of  sections  were  presented.  From  these 
ten  sets,  the  sections  shown  by  Fig.  43,  were  designed,  and 
they  are  the  standard  50  and  100  pound  sections  of  the 
A.  S.  C.  E.  There  was  considerable  difference  in  the  ten 
sections  submitted  and  it  would  be  of  interest  to  write  them 
out,  but  space  will  not  permit.  See  report  for  the  year  1893. 

After  the  adoption  of  the  A.  S.  C.  E.  sections  in  1893  the 
large  number  of  different  types  began  to  decrease,  and  from 
that  time  to  1907  not  a  great  many  new  sections  were 
brought  out.  Those  that  have  come  out  are  close  imitations 
of  patterns  that  have  already  been  shown.  For  that  reason 
I  have  not  made  any  record  of  them,  but  go  direct  to  the  year 
1907,  when  the  new  sections  with  the  heavy  base  appeared. 

This  article  would  not  be  complete  without  some  mention 
of  the  cause  for  this  radical  change  in  the  form  of  the  rail 
section.  During  1900,  1901,  and  1902,  the  railroads  had 
a  great  deal  of  trouble  with  rail  breakage,  and  with  the  rail 
wearing  out  very  rapidly.  This  caused  great  dissatisfaction 
among  the  railroad  men,  and  was  soon  taken  up  by  the  dif- 
ferent mechanical  and  engineering  societies,  who,  along  with 
the  railroad  men,  began  a  crusade  about  1902  for  a  better 
rail.  In  that  year  the  A.  S.  C.  E.  started  this  reform  by 
appointing  a  committee  to  investigate  the  cause  for  these 
conditions,  and  similar  action  was  taken  by  several  other 
societies.  These  committees  at  once  began  their  investiga- 
tions and  brought  out  many  interesting  facts  in  regard  to 
the  subject.  To  attempt  to  enumerate  them  would  be  an 
impossible  task  in  this  article,  and  inasmuch  as  they  were 

45 


THE  RAILWAY 


all  published  in  the  reports  of  the  several  societies,  it  is  not 
necessary.  The  labors  of  the  several  committees  finally 
resulted  in  the  adoption  of  the  sections  shown  by  Figs.  44 
and  45. 

I  have  followed  the  work  of  the  several  committees 
closely,  and  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  situation 
at  this  time  is  largely  a  repetition  of  the  old  story  that  has 
been  enacted  over  and  over  in  the  past  history  of  the  rail 
and  its  development.  That  is,  the  speed  and  weight  of  the 
railroad  traffic  have  overtaken  the  enduring  powers  of  the 
rail,  and  we  must  now,  as  in  the  past,  improve  the  rail  to 
the  point  where  it  will  withstand  the  largely  increased 
work  imposed  upon  it.  This  improvement  must  come  either 
by  a  better  quality  of  material,  such  as  when  the  Bessemer 
steel  rail  superseded  the  iron  rail,  or  by  a  better  disposition 
of  the  material  we  now  have  in  the  design  and  weight  of 
the  rail. 

We  find  from  reading  the  reports  of  the  several  com- 
mittees that  there  was  quite  a  diversity  of  opinion  in  regard 
to  the  change  that  should  be  made  in  the  form  of  the  rail, 
and  it  may  be  possible  before  this  problem  is  finally  settled 
to  the  satisfaction  of  all  the  parties  concerned,  we  may 
revert  to  a  section  somewhat  on  the  order  of  the  bull  head 
rail  in  Fig.  27.  This  would  eliminate  the  broad  thin  base 
which  seems  to  be  the  most  serious  fault  found  with  the 
rail  as  now  rolled. 

The  first  of  the  new  designs  of  rails  with  the  heavy  base 
was  brought  out  by  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company, 
who  on  September  20,  1907,  adopted  the  85  and  100  pound 
sections  as  shown  by  Fig.  44.  These  two  sections  were 
designed  by  the  engineers  of  that  company,  and  were  in- 
tended to  take  the  place  of  the  85  and  100  pound  sections 
shown  in  Fig.  42. 

The  first  of  the  new  design  to  be  rolled  was  the  85  pound 
rail  (Fig.  44  )at  the  Maryland  Steel  Company's  Works,  at 
Sparrow's  Point,  Md.,  on  the  26th  of  October,  1907.  On 

46 


that  date  a  trial  rolling  of  three  heats  (40  to  45  tons)  was 
made.  The  rails  rolled  well  and  withstood  many  severe  tests. 
After  the  first  of  December,  1907,  the  Maryland  Steel 
Company  secured  orders  to  roll  2000  tons  of  the  85  pound 
and  4000  tons  of  the  100  pound  rail.  (Fig.  44.)  This  order 
was  rolled  during  that  month.  The  operation  was  of  especial 
interest  to  the  railroad  men  and  the  different  rail  com- 
mittees, nearly  all  of  whom  were  at  the  works  at  some 


Fig.  44 

period  during  the  time  they  were  being  rolled,  following  the 
various  stages  of  manufacture  and  submitted  the  finished 
rails  to  many  severe  tests.  Both  of  the  sections  proved  to 
be  about  all  that  could  be  expected  of  them  in  regard  to  their 
working  in  the  mill. 

In  1907  the  American  Railway  Association  appointed  a 
committee  on  rails.  This  committee  reported  in  October  of 
that  year,  proposing  two  series  of  rail  sections  weighing 
60,  70,  80,  90,  and  100  pounds  per  yard,  one  series  "A"  and 
the  other  "B,"  as  shown  in  Fig.  45. 

These  sections  were  adopted  as  recommended  by  the  com- 
mittee on  April  22,  1908,  and  are  known  as  the  "A.  R.  A." 
Standard  Rails  "A"  and  "B."  The  "A"  sections  are  a 

47 


IE  RAILWAY  RAIL 


modification  of  the  P.  H.  Dudley  rail  No.  2,  Fig.  41,  the 
"B"  sections  a  modification  of  the  A.  S.  C.  E.  rails  shown 
in  Fig.  43.  During  1908  there  were  not  many  of  them 
rolled,  but  in  the  early  months  of  1909  they  began  to  come 
into  use  quite  freely. 

These  two  series  of  sections  and  the  two  Pennsylvania 
rails  in  Fig.  44  give  a  fair  representation  of  the  changes 
which  have  been  given  to  the  shape  of  the  section  since  the 


Fig.  45 


railroads  began  the  crusade  for  a  better  rail.  If,  however, 
the  railway  men  and  the  rail  makers  do  not  take  a  firm 
hold  upon  and  control  the  situation,  we  shall,  no  doubt,  be 
afflicted  with  an  epidemic  of  new  rail  sections,  such  as 
occurred  previous  to  the  publication  of  the  A.  S.  C.  E.  rails 
in  1893. 

I  do  not  believe  any  change  can  be  made  in  the  design 
of  the  rail  which  will  enable  it  to  withstand  the  work  im- 
posed upon  it  by  the  increased  speeds  and  heavy  traffic  of 
our  trunk  lines,  except  more  metal  is  used  and  the  weight 
of  the  rail  increased  to  at  least  125  pounds  per  yard. 

48 


THF  PAH  WAY  RAIL 


Fig.  46 

During  1910  several  thousand  tons  of  135  pound  rails 
(Fig.  46)  were  rolled  and  laid  in  the  tracks  of  the  Central 
Railroad  of  New  Jersey.  Other  roads  are  now  beginning 


Fig.  48 

Comparison  of  first  rail  rolled  and  the  135  pound  section  of 
the  Central  Railroad  of  New  Jersey. 


p. 

Sec 

IE5 
TEW. 


S. 
leisi 


.  49 

50 


AY  RAH 


to  see  that  it  is  necessary  to  increase  the  weight  of  their 
sections. 

As  a  further  indication  of  this  movement  toward  a  heavier 
rail,  see  section  shown  in  Fig.  47.  This  is  a  new  120  pound 
rail  for  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  Railroad  Company,  and  was 
rolled  at  the  Maryland  Steel  Company's  Works,  Sparrow's 
Point,  Md.,  on  September  7,  1913.  Fig.  No.  49  shows  the 
125  pound  rail  which  is  the  latest  section  designed  by  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  Company's  engineers,  and  of  which 
a  considerable  tonnage  has  recently  been  ordered. 


SUMMARY  OF  NAMES  AND  TITLES  OF  THE  RAILS 
IN  THE  ORDER  OF  THEIR  APPEARANCE 

It  has  proved  quite  a  task  to  classify  and  give  to  the 
early  rails  their  proper  titles,  as  there  are  many  conflicting 
statements  in  respect  to  the  names  given  them  by  the  early 
writers.  I  have  endeavored  to  get  the  names  correct  as  far 
as  possible. 

The  first  rails,  as  we  know,  were  wooden.  The  early 
wooden  ways  were  called  tramways,  this  name  coming 
from  a  Mr.  Outram,  who  was  extensively  connected  with 
the  early  roads,  the  transition  from  Outram  being  easily 
made. 

The  first  iron  rails  were  of  cast  iron ;  cast  in  the  form  of 
flat  bars  and  were  called  plate  rails,  hence  the  English 
railway  term,  "plate  layers."  See  Fig.  5. 

Later,  when  flat  rails  were  rolled  from  malleable  iron, 
they  received  the  name  "strap"  rails.  See  Figs.  15  and  17. 
Figs.  6,  7,  11,  and  12  showing  some  of  the  early  cast  iron 
tram  or  flat  plate  rails. 

The  next  rails  to  come  into  use  were  the  cast  iron  edge 
rails.  See  Figs.  8,  9,  10,  13,  and  14.  Later,  when  edge 
rails  were  rolled  from  malleable  iron,  they  were  first  given 
the  shape  as  shown  in  Fig.  19,  No.  1,  and  were  named 


51 


HE  RAILWAY 


"tee"  rails.  This  name  continued  in  use  until  the  double 
head  rail  shown  in  Fig.  27  came  out.  This  was  at  first 
called  the  "Double  Tee,"  and  to  distinguish  the  first  rails 
the  name  was  changed  from  "tee"  to  the  "Single  Tee."  The 
name  "Double  Tee"  did  not  last  very  long,  and  the  two  rails 
in  Fig.  27  soon  became  known  as  the  "double  head"  and  the 
"bull  head"  rail,  which  names  have  continued  to  the  present 
time. 

The  rail  shown  in  Fig.  20  is  known  in  history  as  the 
Birkenshaw  Fish-Bellied  Rail. 

The  rails  in  Figs.  28,  31,  32,  and  35  are  examples  of  the 
"tee"  rail,  as  we  now  understand  the  term.  These  are  all 
early  rails.  (See  Fig.  40.)  When  these  rails  first  came 
out,  and  for  a  number  of  years  after,  they  went  by  the  name 
of  the  "H"  rail.  This  title  was  frequently  given  to  the 
double-head  rail  by  the  early  writers,  which  made  it  quite 
difficult  at  times  to  distinguish  to  what  type  of  rail  they 
were  referring. 

Figs.  31  and  32  show  some  examples  of  what  are  known 
in  railway  history  as  the  "pearhead"  rail,  and  in  Fig.  33 
are  some  of  the  compound  rails.  These  two  types  came 
under  the  general  name  of  "tee"  rail,  as  we  now  under- 
stand the  term.  In  England,  rails  of  this  pattern  are  known 
as  flat  bottomed  rails. 

In  Figs.  25,  26  and  29  are  shown  the  "U"  or  bridge  sec- 
tions. These  rails  are  now  generally  known  as  the  "bridge" 
rail,  the  name  coming  from  the  custom  of  laying  rails  of 
this  type  upon  longitudinal  sills,  which,  when  resting  upon 
cross  sleepers,  gave  to  the  roadway  somewhat  the  appear- 
ance of  an  extended  bridge. 

At  the  present  time  as  well  as  in  the  past  we  found  a 
great  variety  of  names  given  to  the  different  rails.  We 
find  the  Jessup,  Stephenson,  Birkenshaw,  Clarance,  and 
Stevens,  and  later  the  Welch,  Chanute,  Dudley,  Hunt, 
A.  S.  C.  E.,  etc.  The  names  as  given  above,  Wood,  Plate, 
Strap,  Edge,  Single  "Tee,"  Double  "Tee,"  Double  Head, 

52 


Bull  Head,  "H"  Rail,  Bridge  Rail,  and  Tee  rail,  cover  all 
of  the  various  forms  and  types  that  have  been  in  use  upon 
the  steam  railroads. 

At  this  time  all  of  them,  except  the  Double  Head,  Bull 
Head,  and  "Tee"  rails,  have  gone  out  of  use. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  ON  RAILS 
1767  to  1893 

Strickland,  William.     Report  on  English  Railways,   pub- 
lished 1826. 

Wood's  Treatise  on  Railways,  1832.    Third  edition  1838. 
Stevenson's  Engineering  in  North  America,  1837. 
Lecont's  Practical  Treatise  on  Railways,  1839. 
Tanner,  H.  S.     Canals  and  Railroads  in  the  United  States, 

1841. 

Herbert's  Engineers  and  Mechanics  Encyclopedia. 
<<Adams,  William  B.     Roads  and  Rails,  1848. 
Brees,  C.  S.     Railway  Practices,  1837. 
Poor,  Henry  V.     American  Railway  Journal. 
Franklin  Institute  Journals  of  the  Early  Years. 
Tomlinson's  Encyclopedia,  1854. 
Colburn   and   Holley.     European   and   American   Railway 

Practice,  1858. 
American  Society  Civil  Engineers.     Final  Report  of  the 

Committee  on  the  Form,  Weight,  Manufacture  and  Life 

of  Rails.    Trans.  A.  S.  C.  E.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  327-329. 
•'tlunt,  Robert  W.    History  of  the  Bessemer  Manufacture  in 

America.    Trans.  American  Institute  Mining  Engineers, 

Vol.  V,  pp.  201-16;  1875. 
Swank,  James  S.     The  Manufacture  of  Iron  in  All  Ages, 

published  1884. 
4I611ey,    A.    L.     Rail    Patterns    with    Discussion.      Trans. 

American  Institute  Mining  Engineers,  Vol.  IX,  pp.  360-75, 

529-608;  1881. 

53 


Ashbel.       A  Memoir  on  Rails  with  Discussions. 

Trans.  A.  S.  C.  E.,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  106-10;  1874.    Discussion 

on  above,  Vol.  IV,  pp.  233-37 ;  1875. 
'Dudley,  P.  H.     A  System  of  Rail  Sections  in  Series.    Trans. 

American  Institute  Mining  Engineers,  Vol.  XVIII,  pp. 

763-98;  1889-90. 
-Catkins,  J.  Elfreth.     Development  of  the  American  Rail 

and  Track.    Trans.  A.  S.  C.  E.,  Vol.  XXII,  pp.  209-32; 

1890. 

-"American  Society  Civil  Engineers.     Final  Report  of  Com- 
mittee on  Standard  Rail  Sections.     Trans.  A.  S.  C.  E., 

Vol.  XXVIII,  pp.  425-44;  1893. 


54 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  STEEL  COMPANY 
MARYLAND  STEEL  COMPANY 

GENERAL    PRODUCTS 

PIG  IRON  AND  INGOTS 

"LEBANON"    LOW    PHOSPHORUS    PIG   IRON. 
ESPECIALLY    ADAPTED    FOR    ACID   OPEN    HEARTH 
AND   TROPENAS   STEEL    CASTINGS. 
CORRUGATED    FORGING    INGOTS. 

CASTINGS 

OPEN    HEARTH   STEEL    CASTINGS   OF    ALL    KINDS 
FROM    50   TO   30.000    POUNDS    WEIGHT. 

LOCOMOTIVE   FRAMES. 

MANARD   (MANGANESE   STEEL)    CASTINGS    FOR 

PARTS    EXPOSED    TO    HEAVY    WEAR.   SAFES.    ETC. 

IRON.    MANGANESE    BRONZE    AND    BRASS   CASTINGS. 

BRIDGES  AND  BUILDINGS 

HIGHWAY    AND    RAILROAD    BRIDGES.    DRAWBRIDGES   AND 

VIADUCTS.   STEEL    BUILDINGS    AND    TURNTABLES. 

BUCKLE   PLATES    AND    CYLINDER    PIERS. 

RAILS  AND  ACCESSORIES 

RAILS  OF  ALL  SECTIONS.   WEIGHTS  AND  ANALYSES.  STANDARD* 
AND    HIGH    CARBON   SPLICE    BARS.    COMPROMISE   AND 

SPECIAL   JOINTS.    TIE    PLATES.    GUARDS. 
AND    ALL    ACCESSORIES    FOR   TRACK    MAINTENANCE. 

STRUCTURAL  MATERIAL  AND  BARS 

ANGLES.    BULB    ANGLES.   STRUCTURAL    AND   SHIP    CHANNELS. 

BEAMS.    ZEES.    FLATS.    ROUNDS.    SQUARES 

AND   SPECIAL   SHAPES. 

SEMI-FINISHED  STEEL 

SLABS.    BLOOMS    AND    BILLETS    OF   STANDARD    AND   SPECIAL 

ANALYSES.    MAYARI    STEEL    A   SPECIALTY.    BILLETS 
FOR   SEAMLESS   TUBING.    BARS    FOR    DROP    FORGING    WORK. 

FORCINGS 

SMOOTH    FORGED.    ROUGH    MACHINED    AND    FINISHED 

MACHINED   SHAFTING.   SOLID    OR    BORED.    UP 
TO   35.000    POUNDS    WEIGHT    AND   42    FEET    LONG. 

ALSO    CRANK   SHAFTS.    CONNECTING    RODS. 

DIE    BLOCKS    AND    MISCELLANEOUS   STEEL    FORCINGS. 

FORCINGS    OF    MANGANESE    BRONZE. 

STEAMSHIPS  AND  DREDGES 

STEEL   VESSELS.    TORPEDO    BOATS.    DREDGES, 
FLOATING    DRY    DOCKS.    ETC. 

FROGS  AND  SWITCHES 

FROGS.   SWITCHES    AND    CROSSINGS    OF    ALL   STYLES 

FOR   STEAM    RAILROADS. 
FROGS.   SWITCHES.    MATES.    CROSSINGS    AND    CURVES 

FOR   STREET    RAILROADS. 
SWITCHSTANDS    AND    PORTABLE    CROSSOVERS. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

HEAT   TREATED    MAYARI    STEEL   TRACK    BOLTS    AND 
MACHINE    BOLTS.    RIVETS. 


FOR    FURTHER    INFORMATION    CALL   ON    OR    ADDRESS   THE: 
NEAREST    OF   THE  SALES    OFFICES   ON    THE    NEXT    PAGE. 


THE  PENNSYLVANIA  STEEL  COMPANY 
MARYLAND  STEEL  COMPANY 


SALES  OFFICES 


GENERAL  SALES  OFFICE 
MORRIS  BUILDING.    1421    CHESTNUT  STREET,  PHILADELPHIA 

BRANCH  SALES  OFFICES  AND  AGENCIES 
BOSTON,  70  KILBY  STREET 

MASON  BUILDING 

NEW  YORK,  71  BROADWAY 

EMPIRE  BUILDING 

PHILADELPHIA,   1421  CHESTNUT  STREET 

MORRIS  BUILDING 

BALTIMORE,  201  EAST  BALTIMORE  STREET 

CONTINENTAL  TRUST  BUILDING 

STEELTON,  PENNSYLVANIA 

GENERAL  OFFICE  BUILDING 

CHICAGO,  332  SOUTH  MICHIGAN  AVENUE 

McCORMICK  BUILDING 

ST.  LOUIS,  415  LOCUST  STREET 

COMMONWEALTH  TRUST  BUILDING 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  MARKET  AND  KEARNEY  STREETS 

CHRONICLE  BUILDING 

MEXICO  CITY,  CINCO  DE  MAYO,  No.  2 

EDIFICIO  DE  LA  MUTUA 

LONDON,   110  CANNON  STREET,  E.  C. 


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